Automated Gameplay Testing and Validation With Curiosity-Conditioned Proximal Trajectories

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel deep reinforcement learning algorithm to perform automated analysis and detection of gameplay issues in complex 3D navigation environments. The Curiosity-Conditioned Proximal Trajectories (CCPT) method combines curiosity and imitation learning to train agents that methodically explore in the proximity of known trajectories derived from expert demonstrations. We show how our new algorithm can explore complex environments, discovering gameplay issues and design oversights in the process, and recognize and highlight them directly to game designers. We also propose a visual analytics interface to aid interpretation of results from the method. This interface transforms information from complex models into interpretable and interactive visual forms. We further demonstrate the effectiveness of the algorithm in a novel 3D navigation environment which reflects the complexity of modern video games. Our results show a higher level of coverage and bug discovery than baseline methods, demonstrating that our method can be a useful tool for game designers to automatically identify design issues. Moreover, our experiments show that the visual explanations provided by the analytics interface result in a significant increase in user trust and acceptance of automated playtesting and increased confidence in the use of machine learning techniques for video game development.